This invention relates generally to a muscle-toning device, and more particularly to a device for toning the female pelvic muscle, the anatomical name for which is the pubococcygeus muscle, or PC muscle for short.
In the art of medicine, physicians have noted that female patients encounter gynecological or urinary problems, as well as sexual dysfunction, due to a weakness in this pelvic muscle.
Under certain conditions, surgery has been generally employed to correct the related medical problems of patients. Even after surgery, however, the chronic weakness in this muscle would allow the initial problems to recur in a number of patients within a period of approximately six months.
Therefore, special exercises have been employed whereby the pubococcygeus muscle (hereinafter referred to as the PC muscle) can recover its normal function after years of disuse --sometimes in only a matter of weeks. These exercises have been found to be especially beneficial for women suffering from urinary-stress incontinence.
These prescribed exercises consist of the simple push/pull (contracting) type movement of the PC muscle. However, many women do not understand this muscle, nor can they specifically locate it to control its movement. Thus, there is a need for a muscle-toning device as herein disclosed. To the applicant's knowledge, there is no such device available to assist women in exercising their PC muscle.
The only device now available as an attempt to correct the problem of a weak PC muscle is one devised by a gynecologist, Arnold Kegel, M. D., which is known as a perineometer. With this device, one can observe the strength of the contractions of a patient's PC muscle, so as to determine which exercise program to be prescribed. The perineometer is a hollow rubber cone supported on a form so that it can be inserted into the region of the vagina which is surrounded by the PC muscle. However, this device is simply a gauge and is not designed to assist in exercising the muscle itself.